As educators we are always looking to keep our students at the forefront of changes to information and technology. It is a challenging and often time consuming affair, but once in a while we catch a break and opportunities are brought to us. Its the social media convention - why search for information when the convenience of having the information come to you exists.

One of the many opportunities that the Brilliant Labs organization provides to the teachers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, are those connections to community groups and educators involved in new and exciting activities. This clearinghouse of informed support has provided us with more than one opportunity to connect with novel enterprises.

Mike Duggan (NSCC, Institute of Technology Campus), is one of those contacts. He is keen on helping schools work towards developing capacity to house an underwater robotics team. He approached us after introductions were made by Sarah Ryan of Brilliant Labs. Mike discussed the opportunity of getting a robot up and running for the spring competition to be held at Survival Systems, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia on April 22, 2016. We will attend with a group of interested high school students with the hope of learning what is expected and picking up tips and tricks to implement in our own program. The MATE ROV program (http://www.marinetech.org/) is an international underwater robotics competition held regionally in Nova Scotia with an opportunity for students to move on to the international competitions held in various places in the USA and Canada. Students are tasked with completing a series of activities using a robot they have built and programmed at school. Levels of competition exist. Our high school team would compete at the Ranger class while upper elementary and junior high may start at the Scout or Navigator class of competition.

Great news for teachers who have chaffed at not being able to utilize Google Apps for Education such as Google Drive, Gmail, and Google forms! At the summer ICT institute, the Nova Scotia Department of Education announced the roll out of Google Apps for Education tools to the school boards. Each school board will be responsible for what tools are to be permissible for teachers to use. It is expected that some school boards may wish to have pilot schools for the first year but that would be a school board decisiion. The reason for this change in policy was a year long privacy impact asse